“Now you’re ready to steal the thing but it’s too late,” said Brogus as he glared at Dol across the small table, and the tall dwarf stared impassively back at him without any sort of expression at all on his face. “What do you have to say to that?”
Dol said nothing, nor did he change his blank expression.
“They’ve got it locked up in the Hall of Relics and there are guards on it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” continued Brogus as he pounded the table with his fist. “Pikemen, the High Council’s guard, they wear the gold helmets. The finest warriors in all of Craggen Steep. We can’t overpower them. It’s lost, if you had only listened to me yesterday Dol, you dolt.”
“Inside voice,” said Milli at her usual place between the two dwarves and with her usual glass of elf wine in front of her. “We don’t want everyone in Craggen Steep to know our plan, do we, Brogus?”
“They already know,” said the heavyset dwarf with a scowl. “We’re the laughing stock of the mountain. Everyone on my floor was laughing at me yesterday. Even the lowest of the apprentices from the worst families. I can’t stay in Craggen Steep now, with or without the hammer, we have to get out of here. We could have had it easy just yesterday but now, it’s impossible. Impossible! What does it matter if everyone knows what we wanted to do?”
“It’s not impossible,” said Milli in a quiet voice as she glanced around the crowded room. A number of young dwarves smiled and tried to catch her eye but she ignored them and turned back to her two companions. “I know you don’t like him,” she said with a glance to Brogus, “but Uldex can help us. His uncle Borrombus is in the inner sanctum and he knows how the hammer is guarded. What forces, how many and where, the location of reinforcements, the passageways to take to avoid them.”
“The Hall of Relics?” said Brogus. “How are we possibly going to get in there, steal the hammer,” here he lowered his voice, “and get back out again? There are hundreds of Council Stalwarts guarding it all the time.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” said Milli with a shake of her head that sent her hair flying, “it’s hardly hundreds and there are plenty of times it’s not guarded.”
“Now is the time,” said Dol as he contributed to the conversation for the first time. His face was still a mask of impassivity but his eyes glowed black and he nodded his head. “Now, they think they’ve won.”
“Dol’s right,” said Milli. “Their confident now that our plan was foiled and they’ll relax. With Uldex helping we can get in and get out. You still have a plan to leave Craggen Steep, right, Brogus?”
The burly dwarf nodded his head, “I’ve got friends in the lower levels who know about an old breakout section. Somebody split rock through to the surface years ago and it was patched up, but it’s only a few inches thick, there was an earthquake or something. We’ll poke a hole in it no trouble and be on our way. I can even have mules waiting for us. But I don’t know much about the outside world, I’ve only been with one caravan and that was when I was a kid. We don’t even know where this Koalhelm Tol is located.”
“It’s in the south,” said Milli, “as far south as you can get in a region filled with volcanoes. Fierfelm said…,”
“Fierfelm!” interrupted Brogus with a sudden exclamation that sent his beer slopping out of his mug, “I thought you said it was Uldex that told you all this.”
Milli paused and leaned back in her chair with a little twinkle in her eye and small grin on her face, “I may have led you to believe that, but I never said it.”
“What?” shouted Brogus, standing, putting both hands flat against the table, and leaning over so that his considerable bulk loomed directly above Milli. “You don’t think we should have known that?” He asked with a look over at Dol who sat impassively in his own seat. “Don’t you think little miss pretty should have told us that, Dol? Don’t you?”
Dol shrugged his shoulders and stared back at Brogus with calm black eyes, “What difference does it make where the information comes from, as long as it’s accurate. I want that hammer, I want to be the one remembered for killing Gazadum. You can either watch me to do it, or you can help.”
Brogus stood for a few long seconds as their eyes bored into one another and then he looked up at the ceiling and shook his head, “There’s no stopping you, once you’ve made up your mind. I’ve known that since we were kids. Remember when I broke your nose for eating more than half the brownies that time?”
Dol nodded and a small smile appeared on his face.
“What did he do to you?” asked Milli, looking quickly back and forth between the two.
“He ate all the brownies the next time,” said Brogus with a snort as he collapsed back in his seat. “I could have beat him some more, but what was the point? Then he’d probably just eat all the pie too. You can’t win with Dol.”
Milli laughed aloud, the sound almost like a song, “That’s our Dol. Now that we’ve settled the what, we need to figure out the how.”
“They’ll expect us to wait a few days at least to see the guard routines,” said Brogus with his hand on his chin as he looked at Milli. “I think Dol might be right. We should do it as soon as possible. If they knew about us stealing it in the first place they might have found out about my escape route too. It wouldn’t take a team of miners more than an hour to brick up that narrow break and we’d never get through.”
“So, we do it tonight then?” said Milli in a whisper.
“Why not now?” said Dol and suddenly stood up.
Milli’s eyes opened wide and she stared at her thick-haired friend with her mouth agape, and then she shut it with a snap. “Why not now?” she went on more to herself. “They certainly won’t be expecting it. We just run into the hall and grab the thing.”
“They’ll catch us quick enough,” said Brogus. “They can communicate through the tunnels and have a hundred stalwarts waiting for us whichever direction we go.”
“Uldex can help with that, he can send false messages, get them all confused, we’ll be half way to Das’von before they know we’re even gone. Once we’ve joined up with Corancil’s army they can’t stop us, not without revealing Craggen Steep’s location at least and they’ll never do that.”
“Is it decided that we’re joining up with Corancil, then?” asked Brogus with a grin on his face as he imagined the glories of the marching armies, the booty stolen from defeated towns, the young girls willing to do anything for a powerful soldier.
“How else are we going to get all the way to the southern continent, do you know how far that is?” asked Milli with a little shake of her head. “The First Edos told me what to look for geographically, five volcanoes, along the southern shore of a huge peninsula, but he didn’t tell me how to get there. We need Corancil, they say he’s built portals, transportation gates that can take a dwarf from one side of the continent to the next in a blink of an eye.
Brogus shook his head and smiled, “I don’t believe that nonsense, it’s impossible, but even if we have to walk, we’ll be better off with the army than trying it on our own. Those are wild lands in the center of the world, I’ve talked with traders that went all the way to Sea’cra in the east, it’s dangerous, at least ten thousand miles to the south too, maybe more.
“I don’t believe that bit about portals either,” said Milli with a grin she could not suppress and glowing eyes, “but I guess we’ll find out, won’t we!”
Half an hour later Milli stood at the entrance to the Hall of Relics chatting with a young dwarf who wore a heavy set of chain armor and held a massive pike upright in his right hand. His wore a broad smile on his face as he explained something apparently quite important to the girl, and two other guards stood next to them and interjected their thoughts quite frequently. Milli smiled as they told their stories, gently touching an elbow here or a shoulder there, as she laughed in a musical way.
Brogus and Dol stood about a hundred paces up a long, marble floored corridor and gazed at one of the many sculptures that adorned the passage. The one they examined depicted a squat dwarf with relatively short beard who held a double-headed axe held in both hands while a raven perched on his shoulder. Flat letters imprinted onto an iron plaque on the wall declared, “Harras Drawhammer and Orc Cleaver”. The two spoke in low tones as they glanced occasionally at the thick stone statue.
“How long should we give her?” said Brogus with a glance down the hallway as he fingers tapped his upper thigh and he rocked back and forth on his heels.
Dol said, “Milli will signal, like she said.”
“It’s been too long,” said Brogus with another glance down the hallway, and his fingers increased their drumbeat on his leg. “I’m going to go.”
Dol quietly reached out with his hand, grabbed the heavily built dwarf apprentice by the elbow, and gave him a squeeze.
“That hurts!”
“Wait,” said Dol quietly without relaxing his grip.
“Fine, let go of me, I’ll wait.”
Dol released his grip and then looked back to the statue with a placid expression on his face. “The three main families are the Drawhammers, Blackirons, and Firefists, but weren’t there five major families at one point?”
“How am I supposed to know that?” asked Brogus looking at the statue and shrugging his shoulders. “What does an apprentice like you care about the important families and the High Council anyway?”
Dol looked steadily at Brogus, “Was it the Highhelms? And that raven, wasn’t there something about a family that spoke with ravens?”
Brogus gave out a snort and shook his head, “Fine, if you want to yak about this nonsense be my guest, but don’t expect me to say anything. Aren’t you even a little excited? We’re about to steal the most important relic in all of Craggen Steep, leave the mountain for the first time in our lives, join up with Corancil’s army, and head to the southern end of the world.”
Dol looked calmly at Brogus and smiled, “The pIan is to be inconspicuous while Milli does her thing.”
“Incon what? Anyway, why do we have to do everything exactly the way we plan?”
Dol nodded, “Otherwise there is chaos.”
“A little chaos might do you some good, Dol. You’re too damn calm, too quiet; it’s why you don’t have many friends. You’ve got to get a little crazy, a little wild, do something at random!”
“No,” said Dol firmly and glanced down the hallway towards the halfling girl and the guards. “I think Milli is signaling us.”
Brogus turned sharply and spotted the girl twirling her long hair with one hand while laughing gaily at something one of the dwarves said, “Let’s kick in the door!”
“Slowly, keep cool,” said Dol in a low tone turning to walk slowly up the hallway towards Milli and the heavily armed dwarves at her side. “Keep talking about the statue.”
Brogus bounced along at his side, unable to keep a lively hop out of his step, while Dol continued to move at a steady, smooth gait, both even and calm. When his companion got too far out in front, Dol reached ahead and pulled him back with a firm tug of the cloak. Brogus partially spun around and slapped Dol’s hand away which let his jacket fly open for a moment to reveal the handle of a heavy short axe underneath. It was made from solid oak and worn smooth with time, the gift from his father, and his father before him who knew how many generations. The blade was sharpened to a razor edge and glinted in the bright lights of the hallway.
One of the dwarves with Milli looked up towards the approaching two but the girl put her hand on his chest and looked him deeply in the eyes long enough to distract him away from the approaching dwarves. Another few seconds, another couple of strides, and then they were upon the soldiers.
Brogus pulled out his axe with a smooth motion, twisted it so the blunt end came first, and hammered the lead guard over the head with it. The soldier went straight to the ground without making a sound. The second and third guards turned to the Brogus with eyes wide in shock but their military training took over and they lowered their massive pole arms towards him. Milli put her foot out as the first stepped forward uttering some sort of exclamation; he stumbled to the ground, and dropped his weapon with a clatter. The third and final guard shoved the sharp point of the pike at Brogus who tried to knock it aside with his axe but only managed to slightly alter its course and took a shallow, scrapping wound to his shoulder.
“Intruders!” shouted the second guard from his knees but Milli pulled a small dagger from her belt and hit him over the head with the butt end. He crumpled face first onto the ground and gave off a slight moan, but the third guard remained in the fight and took a step backwards while waving his heavy pike at Milli and Brogus to keep them occupied.
“Get back, both of you!” he shouted. “Alert! Alert!”
Brogus made a move forward towards the guard but a quick stab from the pike sent him back again as he waved his axe at the much longer weapon.
“Alert! Alert!” shouted the guard again and he did not hear the sound of breaking glass behind him. “What do you think you’re doing? Milli, this is the Hall of Relics, the council will throw you into the dungeons!”
“I’m really very sorry,” said Milli in her sweetest voice as she turned her lips down and made a little face. “It’s all a misunderstanding. Put down that pike and we can discuss it?”
The guard looked at her, blinked his eyes twice, and slightly lowered the pike.
Dol kicked him in the back of the knee and the guard stumbled to the ground with a thump, letting his pike go as it skittered across the floor. “I’ve got it,” he said and motioned with his head to the exit. “Let’s go.”
“Lead the way, Brogus,” said Milli as she scrambled away from the entrance just as another couple of heavily armed guards approached from down the hallway. “They’re trying to steal the Drawhammer Shield,” she screamed in a high pitched voice and pointed back into the room.
Both of the guards looked at her for a moment and then dashed past the group and into the Hall of Relics.
“Can you say anything to a man that he doesn’t believe?” asked Brogus as the trio made their way quickly down the marble hallway, not quite running but not walking either.
“You are the most perceptive and handsome fellow I’ve ever met,” she said with a little pursing of her lips as she put her arm around the dwarf.
“Really?”
“No,” said Dol with a shake of his head as they continued their fast walk down the corridor. “Which way, Brogus?”
“You fools!” came a shout from behind them. “They’re getting away!”
“Don’t look back,” said Milli and put her arms around both of the dwarves, “keep walking. Maybe they won’t recognize us.”
“Turn here,” said Brogus. “We need to get into the mine shafts; luckily the Hall of Relics is pretty deep in the mountain. It’s not that far to the break in the wall. Come on, come on!” he said with an elevated voice as he took a quick glance backwards.
“Don’t look!” said Milli, but it was too late.
“There, there they are!” came a shout and the girl recognized the voice of Cleathelm, “it’s them. It’s Delius, the girl and that oaf Brogus! After them, you idiots, they’ve got the Hammer of Fire, they stole it!”
“Now we run,” said Milli.
The three broke into a sprint as they dashed around the corner towards a large pulley operated lift, Brogus headed towards it but Milli grabbed him by the arm, “No, you fool. They’ll pull us back up, the stairs, where are the stairs?”
Brogus looked to his right and said, “This way, around the corner, where are you going?”
Milli had boarded the lift, the big stone chamber was roomy enough to fit a dozen broad shouldered dwarves although not nearly the size of some of the mammoth elevators that brought up tons of ore and rocks from the deep mining operations, and was frantically pulling levers. With a lurch the thing suddenly started downward and the tiny halfling girl made a dash for the gate but the motion of the lift threw her off balance, her foot struck one of the controls, and she fell to the floor with a startled little cry.
“Milli,” shouted Brogus as he turned to the fallen girl, “You said don’t go in the lift! What are you doing?”
“Don’t stand there looking down my blouse, pull me out, you idiot,” said Milli looking up from the floor of the lift.
“I wasn’t…,” said the dwarf.
“Pull me out!” she screamed as the elevator began its descent down.
Brogus took two steps to the lift, fell onto his belly, and reached down to the girl. With a lunge Milli grabbed his hand and he yanked her up and out with a tug so hard that she actually flew through the air and landed face first against the hard stone. She sprang to her feet, blood already showing from a scrape above her left eye, “Down the steps, now, they’ll think we took the lift!”
The three dashed around the corner to an open passage that led to a series of marble stairs that went down twenty steps to a landing and then doubled back on itself. Each landing they passed contained a little alcove where a bust of a dwarf stood with a small iron plaque declaring his importance in the history of Craggen Steep.
“I’ve never taken the stairs before,” said Brogus, stopping to examine a particularly magnificent bust that depicted a fiercely scowling dwarf with a long scar above his right eye. “It says…,”
“Hurry up, you idiot. That lift trick won’t distract them long. How many flights down?”
“I’m not sure by stairs,” said Brogus with a shake of his head as he turned to Milli and Dol. “I know what level it is. Don’t the doors have numbers or something?”
“Come on then,” said Milli with a shake of her head. “This is the worst planned escape I’ve ever been a party too.”
“How many escapes have you been in on?” asked Brogus and even Dol gave a little chuckle.
“Did you just laugh?” asked Milli and turned to the short-haired dwarf and put her hands on her hips.
“No,” said Dol but he stopped to pull a small piece of cloth from one of his pockets and dabbed quickly at the blood on her forehead. “You’re bleeding.”
Milli reached up and touched the slick spot on her head, “It’s nothing, a girl has to have a scar or two to make her look rough. C’mon. How many levels down on the elevator was it?”
“About five, I’d guess,” said Brogus with a lingering last look towards the alcove and the impressive bust in it, “I wonder who that was. I never knew they put statues in the stairwells.”
“Between Dol’s stubbornness and you stupidity I’m not sure we’re going to make it out of Craggen Steep let alone to the south,” said Milli just as an echoed shout came from up above. “Hurry up, they’re coming.”
“Here it is,” said Brogus and pointed to a strange symbol on the stone door that exited the landing they came to in a rush. “We get off here and then it’s not too far.”
“Go one more down,” said Dol as he continued down the stone stairwell. “We’ll double back on one of the other stairwells.”
“Are there other stairwells?” asked Milli, but she followed Dol as he trundled down the stairs. He wore a thick glove, given to them just a short time before by Uldex, that glowed green and held the hammer with it. “Is it hot?”
Dol looked down at the hammer for the first time since he smashed the case and thought for a moment, “Not too bad, but I feel it.”
“The handle, it’s so small,” said Milli looking closely at the great weapon as they made it to the next landing and quickly darted through the door. “Where is this other stairwell?”
“It should be around the corner,” said Brogus. “We dwarves like to stick to the blueprint.”
“There it is,” said Milli as they came around the corner and found an open doorway, exactly like the one they just came through, down to the engravings on the silver door knob, and they quickly dashed back up to the floor above.
“What if they’re waiting for us?” asked Brogus as they stood for a moment on the landing. “They might know our plans.”
“Uldex promised me that he would distract the chase.”
“It doesn’t make any difference,” said Dol, a small frown on his face, and he immediately strode through the open doorway and into the corridor beyond. This deep in the mountain, the hallways lacked both the gleam and finish of the grand chambers above. The corridors didn’t have the smooth stone walls of the upper chambers and, in particular, the ceiling lacked the professional finishing that dwarves put on all their stonework.
“It’s a bit dank,” she said noting that the light stones embedded into the wall were further spaced than above and not of the same intensity.
“We’re too deep for fineries, these aren’t working mine shafts, that’s even further down, but nobody lives here, it’s just tapped out silver and gold veins,” said Brogus. I’ve been down here a hundred times and it gets worse the deeper we go. Come on, it’s this way.”
“Do you hear anything?” said Milli as she turned to Dol to find him carefully examining the hammer in his hand.
“What was that,” said Dol and looked up from the hammer with an unfocused gaze. “Did you say something?”
“Do you hear anything?” said Milli with a stamp of her little foot. She wore a pair of leather boots with wide toes that did not squish her feet. She didn’t often get a chance to put on the work boots but a young dwarf apprentice, she couldn’t remember his name, gave them to her as a gift a few years back. She remembered the disdain she had at the gift originally but now they proved their worth as the only pair of shoes she owned good for hiking and running.
Dol looked up for a moment, startled and tore his gaze away from the hammer, “No, I think we lost them but they’ll be all over the area soon enough. Let’s find that exit and those mules. Have you ever ridden a mule, Milli?”
The girl looked at Dol for a moment and arched her eyebrows as she gave off a silly little grin, “Actually, what is a mule?”
Brogus laughed aloud although the sound didn’t travel far in the thick stone corridor, “You’ll find out soon enough, spawns of Arioch they are. I rode them with the trade caravans, they like to bite, they do, and their gait isn’t smooth.”
Milli laughed and her smile returned in full force, “Why didn’t you tell me all this before we stole the hammer?”
“It’s just around this corner,” said Brogus as they turned down another of the winding passages and then he pulled up short.
“What is it?” said Milli as she also came around the corner but then she saw the brick wall extension that extended for as far as they could see. “They bricked it up?”
Brogus sat down with a thump and put his hands to his head and tugged at his beard, “They’ve been on to us from the first.”
Milli looked down the corridor, “There have to be other areas close to the surface we can break through, don’t there?”
Brogus shook his head and yanked at his beard some more, “They’ll be here any minute, even if Uldex distracts them somehow; they know this is where we’re headed.”
“Don’t give up,” said Milli and she looked at Dol. “What… oh.”
Dol stood in front of the brick wall, the great Hammer of Fire grasped in two hands. The handle was slim, with delicate rune figures carved up and down its length, but the hammer head was thick and almost black with a few heavy red symbols barely visible on it. With a quick motion the dwarf brought the hammer back and smashed it into the brick wall. There was a dull thunk of a sound, but nothing else. Even before the sound faded Dol brought back the hammer and struck another blow.
“Help him,” said Milli turning to Brogus, but the heavyset dwarf was already on his feet pulling an iron jam out from his pack.
“Thump,” went the hammer into the wall again but this time one of the brick’s faces cracked and a powder of red dust puffed into the air. Brogus thrust the jam into the cracked and held it with steady hands just as Dol’s hammer smashed into it sending a shower of brick particles through the air. One of them sizzled past Milli’s head and she ducked back and away.
“Slam,” came the sound of the hammer and the spike drove half its length into the wall.
“Now, this one,” said Brogus as he jammed another spike into the wall and Dol’s hammer hit it directly on the head. The entire wall shuddered and three heavy bricks fell from up above, narrowly missing the two and landing with a crack at their feet.
“Wham,” went the hammer and another spike drove into the wall.
“Two more and we drive a cross spike,” said Brogus, holding the spike at the end without even looking as Dol brought he hammer in for another blow.
“Crash,” sounded the hammer and a shower of bricks flew from the wall.
“That’s enough,” said Brogus placing a spike at angle to the ones already in the wall.
Dol brought the hammer down again and an entire section of brick tumbled to the floor with a terrible crash.
“Now,” said Brogus. “One good blow and we’ll punch through.”
No sooner had the big dwarf uttered the words than Dol’s hammer hit the wall with terrible blow and the old limestone crumbled beneath it. Daylight streamed through.
“You did it!” screamed Milli almost jumping up and down as she peered at the two from around a little bend. “We’re through, come on!” She dashed out and ducked down to crawl past the narrow opening. Dol was next and Brogus came up the rear.
He spotted one of his iron spikes on the ground in the debris of fallen bricks and reached down to pick it up, “Waste not, want… by the spirit of the elders,” he said and suddenly dropped the spike with a flip of his hand. The thing rang out as it scuttled across the floor and he stared at his hand for a moment, “That’s not possible.” He stared at his hand and felt the pain of the burning heat beginning to spread.
“Come on, you big oaf, there’s a bunch of things out here with four legs and a lot of teeth,” came Milli’s voice from outside in the blinding sunshine.
Brogus took one more look back at the iron spike now resting on the floor and shook his hand in pain. “Coming, coming.”